Live Tourney Report - Oct 23

Good news- no mistakes tonight. But no real hands, either, until my pocket aces got cracked at the end. You want a guy calling off a third of his stack when you have aces and then shoving the 356 rainbow flop, you're happy with your chances. You're a bit surprised to see jack-four suited, but you still got your money in as a 2-1 favorite and just have to dodge a seven or a deuce. Tonight I failed to dodge.

That was the second statistical improbability of the night - the first was more spectacular from an odds standpoint, but didn't do much to my overall tourney standing. A shortstack shoved on my blind, I had Ace-Jack, and was even shorter than he was. This player is the king of the weak-tights, and I wasn't sure about my hand. I finally decided he was short enough to push worse and made a call - a good call, as he showed ace-nine. I figured the hand was all but over with an ace-jack-eight flop, but the turn and river came both eights as well, and we chopped a full house. I had to run the numbers on that one - I was a 23:1 favorite on the flop, and ended up chopping the hand. Lovely.

If you fail to win after being a 23:1 favorite, and then you get your aces cracked by J4s backed by less than 6 big blinds, it's probably time to go home for the night.

But I tried the cash game afterward - no dice. I didn't have so much as a pair all night. The table was donk-city - people calling raises with A4o and 49s and 40 big blinds in their stack, people 3betting pocket twos, people chasing 2 outs. And there I sat, folding, folding, folding, or whiffing, whiffing, whiffing. I dropped $20 and decided to put the last $10 in my pocket and go home. Enough punishment.